For a deal­er ser­vice depart­ment, increas­ing tire sales is good busi­ness, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly in direct prof­it from sale of the tires. “The upsell is the biggest rea­son why we do it. We prob­a­bly make $20 on the tires. Basi­cal­ly, there are no prof­its,” except for the labor on relat­ed work, said Nestor Alvarez, ser­vice man­ag­er at Mia­mi-based Land Rover North Dade.

As part of a “free mul­ti­point inspec­tion, cus­tomers vis­it­ing the dealer’s ser­vice depart­ment gets a tire tread inspec­tion, where a tech­ni­cian mea­sures and record tread depth. Cus­tomers are noti­fied if the tires need replac­ing. Cus­tomers usu­al­ly want to replace the tires, but the real prof­its come more from relat­ed jobs such as align­ment, brakes, and shock absorbers. Vir­tu­al­ly every cus­tomer who need­ed new tires also need­ed align­ment, Alvarez said.

In 2012, tire sales increased 125% at the deal­er­ship to just over 1,000 tires. A com­pan­ion Land Rover store, which is also part of the War­ren Hen­ry Auto Group, also more than dou­bled tire sales last year to around 900 units, he said. Pub­lic deal­er­ship groups have also dis­cov­ered the advan­tages of sell­ing more tires. They’re see­ing it as a cus­tomer reten­tion pro­gram – it’s not just about sell­ing tires alone.